Deason is not the first nor the last in the long procession of illustrious martyrs who, in all ages of the world have forfeited their lives in the maintenance of their principles. Unlettered, uncouth, uncultivated in life, resolute and unyielding even in death, he stands recorded upon the pages of this brief history, a noble and brilliant example of the lineal descendants of those who came from the shores of a distant continent, more than an hundred years ago, to seek that freedom of thought, that civil and religious liberty that had been denied them at home.
Many such as he, now live and suffer in the deluded and misguided land of his birth, and like him, have for years carried their lives in their hands, for opinion’s sake. In the good Providence of an all-seeing God—who has indeed imbued the present heads of the nation with the wisdom necessary to appreciate the situation, and devise the appropriate remedy—light begins to appear in the dark places, verifying the saying that, “sooner or later, insulted virtue avenges itself on states as well as on private individuals.”
THE MURDER OF BRINTON PORTER.
While the Grand Jury were holding their sessions as previously stated, and only a short time after Deason’s death, a band of twenty armed and disguised men rode into Irwinton and murdered one Brinton Porter, an intelligent citizen whose offense consisted like Deason’s in his having disseminated Republican principles and voted the Republican ticket.
Porter had received a warning similar to that sent to Deason, but had said nothing about it, even to the members of his own family. After receiving the warning he had neither openly expressed his radical views, nor made recantation of his political faith, but as he had not left the country, as the warning stated he must do, his doom was pronounced in the conclave of the Camp, and it was ordered that he should die.
On the 8th of September, 1871, after concluding the business of the day, and taking tea with his family, Mr. Porter left the family table, and, taking a chair, went out to his door stoop. His only child, a daughter of tender years, accompanied him and sat at his feet. He saw the band of disguised men approaching the house, and deeming himself in danger, immediately arose and was in the act of entering the house when he fell across the threshold pierced by half a dozen bullets, which had been discharged at him by the Klan. The child escaped unhurt. The Klan seeing they had accomplished their purpose, wheeled around and with derisive yells passed out of the town at a sharp trot.
The agony of Porter’s family beggars description. A wife widowed, and a child orphaned in a moment, because their natural protector had assumed the right guaranteed to him by the Constitution and the laws, to exercise the elective franchise according to his own opinion, and the dictates of his own conscience. Can one believe, that in the civilization of the 19th century, and upon the American continent, the boasted refuge for the down-trodden, and the oppressed of all nations, such a scene as that above related could be enacted in the broad light of day, and the whole community not rise up against it? Alas, for the degradation to which political bigotry and a disregard of law, reduces a people, it is only too true.
The data upon which this truthful narration of the murder of Brinton Porter is founded, is a matter of record in the archives of the Government. The facts can neither be gainsaid nor palliated. It is to be hoped that the firm policy of the present administration may bring the people of the community in which Porter lived to such a sense of the great injustice done among them, that they will rally to aid the Government, in bursting the bands thrown about them by the subtletry of their own unprincipled leaders, and stand shoulder to shoulder with those who are doing all that human wisdom can devise to restore order and harmony, and promote prosperity and happiness among the people.
EXTERMINATING THE NEGRO RACE.
Fiendish Designs of the Ku Klux of Wilkinson County.